“The clock’s running down,” Dave told me an hour after we’d gotten back to the Slain Crags.

  “Yeah? What’s it at?” I asked, throwing in a grunt as I slammed my club down through yet another flame naga. It hissed and faded away in a shroud of smoke, but another took its place just as quickly.

  “Can’t be bothered to look up in the corner of your HUD?” Dave said, swooping low to aggro another naga that had spawned not far from me.

  “Says the guy who stays 30 feet away from battle at all times.”

  He sighed dramatically as he led the naga to me, but he gave me the time anyway: “You’ve got three hours.”

  And still no sign of Bridget. Something told me that this didn’t bode well.

  I had set Dave to play lookout for her, both to watch the landscape and my HUD, although I kept a close eye on my HUD whenever possible. He knew now that I might try to Conscript people again, and the moment I did that, the Developers would renege on our deal. He would no longer be able to go free when I died.

  So, I was half-expecting him to betray me now. It was one reason I hadn’t gone to an area with more dangerous enemies, where Dave could potentially lead me to my doom. But while he could also attract Bridget to me, that had yet to happen. I was seeing no betrayal from my supposed ally, and no sign of the Hunter that I had only three hours to kill.

  Even without Bridget showing up, the enemies had me breathing hard. I’d killed at least twenty nagas in the past hour, going in batches of four or five until I had to move to an area where they would respawn again. I had leveled only once in all that time, but I was higher-level than the nagas by quite a bit. It was almost time to move on.

  I hefted the club and swung at the head of a naga as it brought its hands together to cast a spell. Its head jerked left from the strike, and the spell sputtered out. When it recovered, I saw that I’d inflicted the Blind effect on it. An eyeball icon hovered above its head.

  The club had a 10% chance to blind, but the naga only took another bash to the head before it was down. Blinding lower-level enemies wasn’t too useful, but blinding a Hunter or a boss sure would be. I knew that some of the early bosses were susceptible to it.

  A hiss came at me from the left as Dave’s naga arrived, and I spun to strike it. It moved to dodge, but it seemed to trip over itself, and my blow landed. The club also made dodging much harder. The extra 12 damage wasn’t hurting, either.

  When the immediate area was cleared again, Dave said, “Fresh patch up ahead. Want me to get them all in one spot?”

  I checked my Depth gauge and grinned. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

  As he moved to kite all the creatures into one spot, I looted all the drops that were now scattered around me. I checked through the higher-level items carefully. I got plenty of grenades and creature items, like eyes, hearts, skins, claws—some rarer than others—and I’d even picked up a couple of Intelligence Orbs, bringing that stat up even more. A few fire spell scrolls had dropped, but nothing worth equipping even if I were able to equip fire spells, which I wasn’t.

  But every now and then, the nagas dropped weapons and a matching Magma Dire armor set, and that’s what had started to excite me. I’d amassed a fair collection of them now, and most gave resistance to fire magic, which was useless to me because I was already immune to fire.

  However, with this collection of drops, I’d gained a second copy of a red-grade plate piece called a Magma Direplate. Each of those came with one stat: plus 10% HP for each armor piece you are wearing in the set.

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  I inventoried the new one and started running toward Dave. We were coming upon the far side of the flame delta, but we’d been crossing back and forth all day. There were goblins on the other side, if I remembered correctly, and while they were higher-level than the nagas, their drops were worse. Lore had advised me many times to farm the nagas over the goblins when I reached the point I could kill them. Frankly, they pay better, he’d said.

  I gave a running jump and cleared one of the rock islands, landing on another, then crossing two more until I got the attention of the knot of flame nagas that were now hissing after Dave. He flew low toward me, and I caught his eye before he banked and rocketed upward, where he’d keep an eye on our surroundings—and on our advanced HUD—for Bridget.

  Three hours, I thought as the first spells hit me. Four of the five nagas had struck with a basic Lava Bubble attack, which was the same attack they dropped in scroll form. The third kept going after me, cued to hit with melee. He was marked with a higher level. I didn’t wait for him to arrive.

  Instead, I lowered my club and raised my other, empty hand in front of me. Across the lava, I watched as the four spell-casting nagas all gained the Afraid status, turning tail to run as Knuckle-Cracker triggered. One of them failed to escape because of the Pocket Sand Club, but the damage from one of them went into my melee slot. I could release it on the next thing I punched.

  But I only gained one of their attacks, not all four. I’d figured out that Knuckle-Cracker only stored one attack at a time, and any attacks coming in after that would dispel a previously stored attack. So essentially, I only really gained the attack of the last naga to hit me. It made the skill less valuable in group fights, unless I could stagger whoever hit me first.

  I held my free hand flat, but at an angle, in front of my chest. Then I swung it out like an axe blade. It was the gesture for Void Slice, the spell I’d put in my Depth slot.

  It was the first time I’d ever filled it. My hand glowed yellow-and-black as the void element and the Vescent Aspect worked in tandem, and a black line appeared across the gaggle of four nagas. They showed no reaction, but the next instant, the rock under their feet ripped apart, and a thin shelf of stone erupted from the ground and shot toward the black line, as if magnetized to it.

  I gave a hoot of triumph as the stone arced through the whole group, shearing them in half across the middle. It was like cutting wheat. The stone was called to the line of void, sucked into it like matter into a black hole. All four of them died in one hit.

  “Nice!” I said.

  “What the kite-surfing kangaroo was that?” Dave said as most of the shorn island collapsed into the lava river. There wasn’t enough stone left to hold it up. “Why did it tear up the ground?”

  “I’m a Vescent mage,” I said. “Vescent affects the environment, remember? Void spells will create a sort of black hole, and some part of the environment will get sucked into it.”

  On an Oneiric or Divine mage—both of which could also use void spells—the black line itself would do the damage. But not for me. I got to destroy more than my enemies, and I had to say, it was more fun than I’d expected. Half the islands in this area were rubble thanks to my Rock Tumble spell, but this… this was more useful even than that.

  A burbling cry was my only warning as the fifth naga appeared in front of me. It had dropped into the lava, well below the line of the Void Slice, to try to get to me, and now it was climbing up again.

  I dropped my arm and took a step back. “Dave!” I shouted. “Fly me out of here!”

  The naga raised a taloned arm and slashed at me. It hissed as it took half its own damage back on itself. I raised my arm out, and Dave caught my sleeve in his talons and yanked on me. He grunted with effort as I sailed backward, to the next island, where I’d stationed Hergvor to heal me. It was about as far as Dave could pull me before his strength failed him.

  Still, for a Game Guide with no Strength stat, he sure had some real heft to him.

  “I still can’t believe you can do that,” I huffed, turning to switch Hergvor to follow mode. Once he was set, I ran away from the oncoming naga, and Hergvor followed.

  “It’s because I’m a very special boy,” Dave said in a whiny voice. “Hey. Why are you running? You could kill that guy in your sleep.”

  “Just let me know when he gives up the chase.”

  Dave huffed but flew higher. I kept running. How was he able to carry me with no Strength, anyway? It must be some bonus of his 90 Dexterity points. The only other explanation was that it came from his natural strength, and since he was 8 inches tall, I highly doubted that.

  A full minute passed before Dave said, “It turned around.”

  I stopped, turned, and jogged toward the naga. Hergvor tromped along after me. He had the good sense to jump across the gaps, but sometimes he had to mill around a bit to find a route short enough for him. Occasionally, he had to take a roundabout way, jumping to a side island and then jumping to my island from there.

  “What’s the point of this?” Dave asked.

  “You’ll see.”